Great Sacrifice
Description :"An advanced form of Sacrificial Bolt that boasts greater destructive power and slows time further while aiming." A more powerful form of Sacrificial Bolt that returns a pawn to the rift in exchange for a magickal bolt of great destructive power. Usage For the spell to be cast the Arisen must have at least one pawn in their party to sacrifice. After a relatively long incantation a randomly selected pawn is sacrificed and returned to the rift - their 'life force' is transferred to the bolt which can then be fired. Whilst the spell is fully incanted and charged the Arisen's vision becomes monochrome, and time slows - though the spell itself requires little or no stamina to cast, whilst time is slowed stamina depletes rapidly. Releasing the spell fires a dark enchanted magic bolt of great power. If a foe was targetted with the spell the bolt will track them. The offensive damage is two fold : # A directly struct creature receives great damage if the bolt strikes them directly, and if hit will also substantial knockback with human sized creatures knocked back several meters. The power of the inital shot will also knock back the caster too. # The second effect is a massive damage blast of wide radius, with a huge dark critical effect, which damages both the target, and any other creatures within range, as well as destroying any fragile objects in the near area. If stamina is exhausted whilst the spell is being held time will return to its normal rate of passage - the spell can still be cast however with no loss of power. The sacrificed pawn is chosen randomly, and immediately returned to the rift - no rescue is possible, and the Legion's Might staff also does not resurrect the fallen pawn. Damage Both Sacrificial Bolt and Great Sacrifice create a dark element magickal arrow attack through the sacrifice and 'death' of a hired pawn. The ratio of damage from the initial bolt, and subsequent dark critical blast is roughly 1:2. Damage is very high regardless of the Arisen's magick. Increases in magick attack weakly increase damage done. Magick damage boosters such as Magick Rebalancer, or Demon's Periapts increase damage, but physical attack boosts such as Conqueror's Periapt have no effect. *If the Arisen is sufficiently strong then the damage will top out and the level of the sacrificed pawn will make no difference. *Against relatively strong foes the damage scales strongly with level of the sacrified. *The scaling with magick is weak - for a ~50% increase in secondary weapon magick, damage was increased by under 5%. *For example - a Lv.75 Arisen with magic attack of ~500 did the same damage against an Ox with pawns at levels 1, 75, and 150. Under the same conditions damage done to a Cyclops was found to be unaffected by pawn level. Both creatures were killed in one shot under all conditions. *With a similar party, and Arisen of magick 300(500); a sneak attack on a Gorechimera (any head or body part) Sacrificial Bolt was able to kill in one blow the beast doing around 130,000 hp of damage, irrespective of the level of the pawn (1-150); when the Gorechimera was not unaware of the attack the sneak attack bonus was lost and damage was around 65-70,0000 per shot, irrespective of pawn level - it required two bolts to kill the creature under these conditions. Notes *If no pawns are present the spell will still be incanted, but attempts to fire a bolt fail. *The initial release of the spell bolt causes some knock back to the caster (Arisen) - be cautious using this spell in elevated places as the knockback is sufficient to cause the user to be forced of a ledge to a nasty fall. *Hired pawns are sent back to their own Arisen with an average 3/3/3 review, no item gift and no message (just as though they had fallen into the Brine). *Since this attack is automatically imbued with the Dark element, be aware of this when facing with enemies that are resistant to Dark, such as the Ur-Dragon. *It is possible to cancel the attack before the spell fully charges, but once the spell is fully charged, a pawn will be sacrificed regardless of whether the arrow is fired or not. *Stamina depletion can be mitigated by eating or drinking stamina restoratives, similar to the method used with the Sorcerer spell Exequy. **Alternatively depletion can be halted by imbibing Liquid Vim - since time is slowed the potion will appear to have an unusually long duration of effect. **If stamina depletes entirely the monochrome world view will end, and normal color vision is returned ; however if stamina restoratives are take afterwards (but before the bolt is released) time will once again slow as long as the caster has stamina - however the monochrome effect will not return. * This skill has a very wide blast radius and is one of, if not the, most powerful skill in the game. As a comparison a Great Gamble fired from a Gold Rarefied Revenant Wail with very high Stamina and maximum base Attack is outdamaged by Great Sacrifice fired from a Gold Rarefied Blackwing Bow with maximum base Magick and a level 200 pawn being used for the sacrifice. * The blast will damage and destroy Golem discs. **If a specific disc is targetted it may not receive the majority of the damage - discs in the general blast radius are affected. **The 'physical' component of the spell appears small - for example a Sacrificial Bolt against a Drake's heart removed 4 health bars, and then Drake was easily vanquished with three bolts; in comparison 3 bolts of similar power against a golem destroyed some discs, but the creature's overall health was still over 50%. * Has no effect against Death. *Usually a 'battle cinematic' plays when the pawn is sacrificed, with the viewpoint swinging round to show the death throws of the pawn - a purple bead of life force then must travel from the pawn to the magick bow before the spell can be released. If the pawn is not within close view, such as behind a door, or round a corner this cinematic will not play, and the bolt can be fire immediately on completion of the spell induction period. *A glitch allows the world view to be semi-permanently switched to monochrome using this spell - for more details see : Screenshots Category:Skills Category:Magick Bow Skills Category:Dark Based Skills